Critical Issues to improve

[Neumann]

It would be nice if you could for example give your CAS bombers an order to act as ground support to your troops in any battle happening within their range. So far it is a rather tedious excercise to use bombers properly. After an initial brakethrough, you hardly get the chance to use planes in support of the grunts...

Regarding AI for Air units... What about giving them an order... and the unit would have something like being able to recieve and complete up to 3 orders set by priority...

For example, we've got a CAS group on the frontier with france; and it's primary order is to give ground suppport for combat (attacking or defending on the area where the airport is or close to that airport) that would be their standing order, then comes their second mission (in order of priority) which is logistical strike for to those pesky units which could move from metz to lorraine or something like that!

You could do the same for interceptors and or fighters, if on the front line,
First Mission is Air superiority / Second Mission Escort Bombers / Ground attack?

just some ideas!

 

[unmerged(56905)]

I won't even consider buying HoI3 if ...

Hello.

I completely agree with the OP, especially about naval warfare.

My favorite country being Japan, I eventually lost all interest in HoI2 when I realized this game could not emulate the Pacific war properly.

I won't even consider buying HoI3 if the following aren't removed:
- The overpowered nav bombers;
- The AI unlimited naval range.

The latter being especially paramount. In my last and final HoI2 game, I (Japan) controlled every naval base in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Yet, US and English surface ships still sailed freely around the Philippines and Mariannas.

 

[unmerged(121827)]

Hello.

I completely agree with the OP, especially about naval warfare.

My favorite country being Japan, I eventually lost all interest in HoI2 when I realized this game could not emulate the Pacific war properly.

I won't even consider buying HoI3 if the following aren't removed:
- The overpowered nav bombers;
- The AI unlimited naval range.

The latter being especially paramount. In my last and final HoI2 game, I (Japan) controlled every naval base in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Yet, US and English surface ships still sailed freely around the Philippines and Mariannas.

As far as I've heard, the unlimited naval range will be removed, certainly hope that this will be the case. I'm not sure that naval bombers are overpowered, after all this is how the Japanese sunk Prince Of Wales and Repulse and how the Americans sunk Yamato.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I'm not sure that naval bombers are overpowered, after all this is how the Japanese sunk Prince Of Wales and Repulse and how the Americans sunk Yamato.

# PoW and Repulse were sunk by TAC bombers (twin engine) equipped with torpedoes and naval weapons, not by 4 engine floatplanes (aka naval bombers)
# Yamato were sunk by CAG, not a single land based bomber participated.

 

[daemonofdecay]

# PoW and Repulse were sunk by TAC bombers (twin engine) equipped with torpedoes and naval weapons, not by 4 engine floatplanes (aka naval bombers)

I always felt that "Naval Bombers" as a unit shouldn't be in the game. It seems to me that it could easily be fixed to a more historic degree by having your usuall "Tactical Bomber" research and then "Naval Bomber" techs being a seperate branch, and instead of giving you a new unit it would provide bonuses to Tactical Bombers and CAGs, representing development of improved torpedoes, training methods, tactics, etc. for attacking naval ships that would increase both units naval attacks.

# Yamato were sunk by CAG, not a single land based bomber participated.

CAGs should be the best at sinking ships, as they are "Naval Bombers" (and fighters) who's priority is targeting other ships, and have pilots trained for such missions.

Yet navies should still fear sailing into costal waters without proper air support, because CAS and TAC wings still present a threat to naval ships.

Maybe there should be an command that you could give to land based fighter aircraft like "Provide Air Cover" that you can launch on a friendly fleet that will send the fighters to just patrol over the selected fleet until the fleet is either docked or out of range?

 

[Evie HJ]

Naval warfare is entirely out of whack.

In HOI II, the best way to get rids of capital ships are, in order, NAVS, SAGs, CAGs and Subs.

In the actual war, the CAGs had the highest capital ship kills score, Subs actually came in second, and IIRC "other ships" third and "land-based air power" a distant fourth.

And most of those land-based air power kills came from land-based TACs (Prince of Wales, Repulse) and CAS, not anything the game define as Navs.

 

[MAC]

If there is a chain of command in HOI3, there may not have to be any difference in the way leader deaths are handled to make them more prevalent.

For instance, if I have a full army in combat consisting of 12 divisions, with a proper chain of command, I would have 12 mj.gens, 4 lt.gens, and either a 4 star or a FM in overall command. With 17 generals instead of 4 or less, and the same chance of a leader dying in combat (as in HOI2) then I am at least 4 times as likely to lose one of them, and most likely it would be a mj.gen.

With a proper chain of command I might lose a lot of generals, which is for some countries, very accurate.

Generic leaders should be able to earn xp, though. This would also help smaller countries.

Naval warfare is entirely out of whack.

In HOI II, the best way to get rids of capital ships are, in order, NAVS, SAGs, CAGs and Subs.

In the actual war, the CAGs had the highest capital ship kills score, Subs actually came in second, and IIRC "other ships" third and "land-based air power" a distant fourth.

And most of those land-based air power kills came from land-based TACs (Prince of Wales, Repulse) and CAS, not anything the game define as Navs.

They probably indeed would not need too much change, if CAP would work like in WitP and you could cover your ships to some degree. Also the chance to find and engage a ship should be rather low - but when engaged the outcome should have the chance to hurt.

As far as I've heard, the unlimited naval range will be removed, certainly hope that this will be the case....

Would be great.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Generic leaders should be able to earn xp, though. This would also help smaller countries.

I wouldn't be angry if you could rather create new (random) leaders with your leadership points instead of those generic ones you tend to loose all the time.

 

[MAC]

I wouldn't be angry if you could rather create new (random) leaders with your leadership points instead of those generic ones you tend to loose all the time.

That sounds good, especially if they would be able to gain skills like panzer leader when commanding mainly armoured forces for quite some time and so on.

Well, so far PI is doing quite a job with all the improvements. Looking like HOI3 will be a huge step forward. Still I am really wondering about the changes to the aircombat and naval system.

 

[langemarckdiv.]

Bombers must be able to target a specific province. I hate when the CAS fly over a retreating division to attack the dug-in garrison with an AA brigade.

agree!

 

[langemarckdiv.]

I don't understand that some people find targeting units yourself is too much micromanagement?
I think this is just the fun of HOI; you attack and you pause and change orders!
First you attack with land forces and interdiction missions on the attacked units. When you're victorious, you change your plane mission in ground attack and you watch your enemy melting like snow in the sun!

 

[bz249]

Naval warfare is entirely out of whack.

In HOI II, the best way to get rids of capital ships are, in order, NAVS, SAGs, CAGs and Subs.

In the actual war, the CAGs had the highest capital ship kills score, Subs actually came in second, and IIRC "other ships" third and "land-based air power" a distant fourth.

And most of those land-based air power kills came from land-based TACs (Prince of Wales, Repulse) and CAS, not anything the game define as Navs.

Well I do not know how it is for other capital ship types, but for BBs in action (since in port is covered by port strike)

CAG: Yamato, Musashi, Hiei (partly)
Sub: Barham
Ground based planes: Prince of Wales, Repulse, Roma (?)
Other BBs: Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Hood, Yamashiro, Kirishima
CAs: Hiei (partly)
DDs: Fuso

Anyway port strike should be open for other ship types since if was certainly possible to use submarines (for example in Scapa) as well as a SAG (for example in Oran) for such kind of operations in the real war.

 

[peo]

Both the naval and air combat portions need serious rewrites.

Naval bombers should imo be more naval recon as that imo is more fitting with that they worked as irl.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Anyway port strike should be open for other ship types since if was certainly possible to use submarines (for example in Scapa) as well as a SAG (for example in Oran) for such kind of operations in the real war.

Imo port strike on any real Port would have your SAG facing at least a battleship worth of land based artillery per size that port have + all aircrafts based in that same province. There is a reason ports are expensive to build and thats partlly cause you generally gave them enough artillery for the sailors to be able to sleep well at night and leave the ships on shore leave.

 

[Zwiback]

Imo port strike on any real Port would have your SAG facing at least a battleship worth of land based artillery per size that port have + all aircrafts based in that same province. There is a reason ports are expensive to build and thats partlly cause you generally gave them enough artillery for the sailors to be able to sleep well at night and leave the ships on shore leave.

Are you sure. AFAIK only fortresses like in Singapour had really BB like weapon emplacements. Most shore batteries where more DD or CL like.

 

[peo]

Are you sure. AFAIK only fortresses like in Singapour had really BB like weapon emplacements. Most shore batteries where more DD or CL like.

I think he was referring to the AAA rather than shore defenses.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Are you sure. AFAIK only fortresses like in Singapour had really BB like weapon emplacements. Most shore batteries where more DD or CL like.

Perhaps not 100% civilian ports, but all military ports with a real threat had guns to protect them.

Range is of no real matter since the battries were easy to conceal and positioned outside the harbour so that fleets had to get in range of them to reach the moored ships. Im not talking about calibre only but of the general firepower a battleship had. Pretty much all old turrets from scrapped battleships, cruisers and dreadnoughts went to harbour emplacements IIRC.

 

[unmerged(31881)]

About air-units and targeting: it would be more effort... but i think the option of choosing the specific target would be helpful. Just as i wouldn't like to see the ability to send a 'general order' removed. i.e. let the player decide how much micromanagement they want. For instance, if you have interceptors, i wouldn't want to have to manually reassign them every time there was a bomber sortie one province over. Nor would i want to have to re-target the bombers after every strategic sortie.

A lot will depend on how they work air units in the new one, but personally i'd rather avoid an either/or mechanism for commanding the units.

 

[Mendeth]

Naval warfare is entirely out of whack.

In HOI II, the best way to get rids of capital ships are, in order, NAVS, SAGs, CAGs and Subs.

In the actual war, the CAGs had the highest capital ship kills score, Subs actually came in second, and IIRC "other ships" third and "land-based air power" a distant fourth.

And most of those land-based air power kills came from land-based TACs (Prince of Wales, Repulse) and CAS, not anything the game define as Navs.

It really depends on the theatre though. In the indian ocean (the often forgotten theatre of WWII), Sunderlands from the UK Coastal Command and Catalinas from the USAAF reigned supreme. Yes, the odd surface force passed through and took its toll upon german and japanese submarines, however for the most part, the 'naval' bombers/recon planes did the most of the damage.

 

[Evie HJ]

You're comparing apples and oranges, though. NAVs were solid submarine hunters, but I was talking about how to get rid of capital ships - big warships. Very few axis capital ships even went into the Indian ocean the whole war (there was the Ceylon raid, pretty much) and that was it.

In terms of fighting capital ship, Catalinas and Sunderlands never even got close to getting a kill.

bz249 - you're missing Kongo (submarine kill, in much the same way as Barham).

For non-BBs, you have the fleet carriers, which, seeing as they served as THE capital ships for much of the naval part of the war, sort of warrant notice.

Including those, you have also (excluding port strikes):

CAG kills: USS Lexington, USS Hornet, Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, Soryu, Zuikaku
Sub Kills: USS Wasp, USS Yorktown, HMS Courageous, HMS Ark Royal, Shinano, Shokaku, Taiho, Unryu,
BB Kills: HMS Glorious

Focusing on the bigger carriers here - if you factor in the smaller ones...well, it's mostly more of the same, with a handful of kills by land planes being added in.

Also, consider, again, what sort of land-based bombers actually did the killing: in HOI terms, it was TACs, not NAVs that killed Prince of Wales and Repulse.